A Phlaming Phoenix

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • There was a post here a while back about how younger generations often don’t understand concepts like file system structures because concepts like that (which are still relevant in a lot of contexts) have been largely stripped out of modern user interfaces. If your primary computing device is a cell phone, a task like “make a nested directory structure and move this file to the deepest part of it” is a foreign concept.

    I guess my point here is that I agree with yours about this being cyclical in a sense. I feel crippled on a cell phone, but I’m also in my comfort zone on a Linux terminal. Using web apps like MS Teams is often difficult for me because their UIs are not things I’m comfortable with. I don’t tend to like default layouts and also tend to use advanced features which are usually hidden away behind a few menus. Tools built to meet my needs specifically would largely not meet the needs of most users. A Level 1 user would probably have a better experience there than a Level 3 like me. It’s hard (maybe impossible) to do UX design that satisfies everyone.


  • Some of it is a fad that will go away. Like you indicated, we’re in the “Marketing throws everything at the wall” phase. Soon we’ll be in the “see what sticks” phase. That stuff will hang around and improve, but until we get there we get AI in all conceivable forms whether they’re a worthwhile use of technology or not.







  • In general, I agree. I’ll add two things:

    • Android allows you to use third party launchers if you don’t like the one that comes with your phone. I use Nova Launcher, for instance. I’m not an Apple person, but to my knowledge that’s either not possible or a pain to do on an iPhone. It also lets me buy from different Android device manufacturers and keep a consistent UI across all of them.
    • Android has some serious UX issues in a few places. The one that gets me the most is when you share something. The interface you get differs based on the source app, sometimes only has a handful of visible options with no sorting or recency options, and it hides the fact that’s you can scroll to see more, but never more than about four at a time.

    Still, I’ll take it over an iPhone any day.





  • The article asks what is the politically neutral answer to the question of whether a trans woman is a woman. I wonder why this is a political question at all. Send like a question for scientists - biologists and sociologists and such. Seems they have achieved something like a consensus on the matter. I don’t see anything inherently political about that, except that folks of a certain political bent have made it political. It’s not a matter of “what do we do in public policy about trans people” but “fascists refuse to accept trans people in society and have decided to lambast and punish them”.

    In case my position isn’t obvious, trans people are people and trans rights are human rights. If there wasn’t a group of people trying to make them into a second class group of citizens (or a group of “eradicated vermin”) we wouldn’t be having a political conversation about this at all.